Large Eddy Simulation in a Channel with Exit Boundary Conditions

The influence of the exit boundary conditions (vanishing first derivative of the velocity components and constant pressure) on the large eddy simulation of the fully developed turbulent channel flow has been investigated for equidistant and stretched grids at the channel exit. Results show that the chosen exit boundary conditions introduce some small disturbance which is mostly damped by the grid stretching. The difference between the fully developed turbulent channel flow obtained with LES with periodicity condition and the inlet and exit and the LES with fully developed flow at the inlet and the exit boundary condition is less than 10% for equidistant grids and less than 5% for the case grid stretching. The chosen boundary condition is of interest because it may be used in complex flows with backflow at exit. *Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT, Kanpur , India. t This research was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under NASA Contract No. NAS1-19480 while the fourth author was in residence at the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE), NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681-0001.